I've been fascinated by how the world really works for many years now. You could say that I took the 'red pill' when I was in university more than 10 years ago.
After the collapse of the markets in 2007/08 I was left to investigate how the world monetary system works. To say that I was shocked about how the petrodollar and central banking worked left me shocked and angry is an understatement. The fact that central banks print money into existence and lend it to the population at interest was something that never occurred to me.
This led me to gold and silver. I was intrigued by the fact that the value of money used to be contained in the actual money. This seemed to make a lot more sense than the funny money that we have today in the form of notes (what Americans would call bills) and coins made of common metals with little intrinsic value.
Not one to just scratch the surface I kept up my research, wondering 'how can I beat this system'. I found my answer, but I wouldn't know it until years later when it was too late to take full advantage of what I'd discovered. A once in a lifetime opportunity was staring me in the face and I didn't even know it. I had discovered this crazy thing called Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency that a few crazy people were using to exchange value anonymously across the internet. At this stage it was a mere few AUD (Australian Dollars) per Bitcoin.
I was convinced that it was nothing but a fad, or that if it did take off that the powers that be would crush it before it could take hold. I didn't know how wrong I was.
Over the next twelve months I kept an eye on the story of Bitcoin, it was taking hold and increasing in price. People were even doing crazy things like setting up mining rigs using GPUs rather than CPUs because they had grater hashing power. By now Bitcoin was up to 85 AUD and I was really starting to be convinced that this might just work out for the good guys. I went and spoke with my wife (girlfriend at the time) and proposed to put 1,000 AUD into bitcoin on the off chance that it 'goes to the moon'. At that stage we didn't have any kids or responsibilities so she didn't mind. But still, I balked where I could have bought approximately 12 BTC for 1,000 AUD.
Years later I married that woman and she gave birth to our beautiful daughter a little under three months ago. I have finally got into the cryptocurrency space. I now have 0.3 BTC and 2.1 ETH and am slowly building towards my goal before letting it sit until 2020 or so when I plan to use it for a house deposit.
Had I believed in my own conviction back then I'd now have about 30,000 AUD worth of BTC and would have the money I need for that house deposit today. Alternatively I could have just let it sit for another few years and bought a house outright. When you consider that in Australia a home loan is normally over 25 or 30 years, you pay back up to or even more than double the principal, that's about a million dollars worth of regret over a thousand dollars worth of risk I wasn't willing to take.
This is a lesson in taking opportunities, and compound interest that I will never forget.
Spenna
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